Memories are priceless. It may seem just yesterday when your child was taking the first step and all of a sudden he is ready to join college. Starting from the child’s first step to his first step into college, there may have been numerous moments and occasions that were important like probably the kid’s first dance show, his first fancy dress competition, first speech in school or just the innumerable times when he might have hugged you or made funny faces for a number of things. At all those instances you might have wanted to freeze the time to enjoy and devour the true essence of the moment. The joy, happiness and pleasure that one gets during these cherished instants is just impossible to be explained or measured.

“Time and Tide Waits for None”, this is a universal truth. Thus it is important to capture and lock these special moments to be remembered and cherished later in life. You can probably sit back with your child and remember the pranks he played on others or you could have a look at his award winning photographs and feel proud of him when he is probably pursuing his dream and is too busy to spend time with his folks.

About a decade ago photography required tremendous effort; one needed to load the film, get the photos printed only to discover later that some of your memories could not be printed properly due to lack of lighting, exposure, improper shooting style or any other reason. So one might consider hiring professional help for the special moments. However what about the simple day-to-day activities! Can one hire a professional photographer for that too? This question was heard by many camera manufacturers and they developed digital cameras. Thus everyone could just grab a digital camera and start shooting. This sparked off the digital camera revolution.

People started taking to the digital camera revolution due to its cost effectiveness and ease of use along with convenience. What many do not realise is by switching from film cameras to the digital counterparts they are helping save the planet.

How can digital cameras save Mother Earth ??? Let’s have a look.

Many people are under the presumption that film cameras do not harm the environment. Of course they don’t, but the harmful chemicals used to process the images definitely distort the ecological balance. Everytime a picture is taken it has to be processed, which is done at the processing centre where it is run through a series of hazardous chemicals. These developer and fixer solutions must be discarded after a single use.

The point is can these chemicals be disposed of in a safer and greener way? The answer is yes. For this; the chemicals must be trapped into a certain type of absorbent material that is capable of making them chemically inactive. This must later be disposed off into a landfill. But everything comes at a cost and to save the little extra expense more often than not these chemicals are just poured down the drain. This means that the hazardous stuff enters the water supply and into the seas and oceans playing havoc with marine life. This is one reason for the attrition of marine life that is happening at an alarming rate.

With the digital camera revolution the use of the processing chemicals have been greatly reduced and if this continues the use of these hazardous substances might go down to zero. Your next question would probably be regarding the eco-friendliness of the ink used for printing these digitally captured photographs and the batteries used for powering these digital cameras. The result of a survey indicates that 80% of the people do not print their digital photographs but share them via social networking sites or maintain it in digital format by writing it on CDs.

As far as the ink cartridges go, one is bound to dispose it off only when it is completely exhausted. Also, the batteries are disposed off only when they are fully consumed, directing them to the landfill (solid wastes are disposed off in the landfill).

If you are a nature lover and care for your planet, save your memories the digital way.

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